ADAM STOKELL

The Blue Planet

They wrote of rain as if it just fell out of the sky
like joules, manna from Science,
good for crops
and reservoirs, otherwise
inimical to outdoor events.

They seem to have pictured some cyclical
time-share handshake
with the oceans, the freshwater flats
called lakes, and the brackish
rivers that still linked them.

Hydrologies brimming with aquifers,
divinations, cold
water-borne animals that got away.
Those doubtful trees that keep popping up
in their books were believed
to sweat litres up into cloudless air
like bytes, watt-free,
on a warm solar morning.

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Adam Stokell’s poems have appeared in several Australian journals, most recently in Cordite, Meanjin and Pink Cover Zine. He caretakes a bush-block at Slopen Main on the Tasman Peninsula.